Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Remote Desktop over the Internet using UltraVNC on Windows

Here is a HowTo for setting up a UltraVNC server on your computer, automatically open needed ports, and creating a configured UltraVNC single-click client to let you see someones desktop where all they have to do is start the client you send to them. No installations!(A great alternative is TeamViewer which is free for personal use, but expensive for commercial use)

- Download UPnP PortMapper to open the needed port on your computer (if you havent done so manually on your router).
https://sourceforge.net/projects/upnp-portmapper/files/latest/download
https://github.com/kaklakariada/portmapper

- Open PortMapper jar file (should need only double-click if you have Java installed).
- Under the section "Port Mapping presets", select Create button.
- Enter a description, e.g. UltraVNC.
- Then click Add button.
- Change port 1 to 5900 in both External Port and Internal Port columns.
- Not sure if you also need UDP port open, but might be useful so click Add again and select UDP with port 5900 internal and external.
- Click save.

- Click connect to connect to your router.
When successfully connected (you might get an error, but stuff seems to work regardless).
- Select your UltraVNC entry in the list and press "Use".
- Wait for ports to show up in the list above.

Now you have ports open. You need to start VNC listener:
- Open command line prompt (cmd in windows start menu) and navigate to where you installed UltraVNC and run it with flag -listen 5900 to tell it to listen on port 5900:
cd "C:\Program Files\uvnc bvba\UltraVnc"
vncviewer.exe -listen 5900

- Finally, send the exe file you generated from helpdesk.txt (not the zip file) to the person you want to connect to. Get the person to open the file and double click on the top option and you should get a message on your computer asking you to accept the connection.